As explained in U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0180648, the complete disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, a new approach to satisfying the compression needs of data, such as the different types of image data, is to use an encoder pipeline that uses a mixed raster content (MRC) format to describe the data. The image data, such as for example, image data defining a composite image having text intermingled with color and/or gray-scale information, is segmented into two or more planes. These planes are generally referred to as the background plane and the foreground planes. A selector plane is generated to indicate, for each pixel in the composite image, which of the image planes contains the actual image data that should be used to reconstruct the final output image. Segmenting the image data into planes in this manner tends to improve the overall compression of the image, because the data can be arranged into different planes such that each of the planes is smoother and more readily compressible than the original image data. Segmentation also allows different compression methods to be applied to the different planes. Thus, the most appropriate compression technique for the type of data in each plane can be applied to compress the data of that plane.